The invention relates to a technology of automatically, when transmitting an electronic mail from on a personal computer or a cellular phone, adding additional information on the basis of a content of description of the electronic mail.
Nowadays, electronic mails become utilized broadly on mobile terminals such as cellular phones, a PDAs (personal digital assistants), etc. without being limited to personal computers.
The mobile terminal such as the cellular phone, the PDA, etc. has much restriction because of the priority being given to its portability and has problems, wherein a small-sized input device such as a keyboard, etc. is hard to input, the processing of an image file and a music file is too time-consuming due to a low throughput of an arithmetic processing unit.
It was therefore difficult to create and send a text attached with some sort of file on the cellular phone.
For instance, on the occasion of sending information about an appointment for meeting, a delivery of the mail attached with a map of a periphery of an appointment place for meeting requires a labor such as “search for map information→acquisition of map image information→attachment of image data” separately from creating a mail text purporting the appointment for meeting.
It is highly difficult to perform this by the cellular phone with its limited throughput and operability. Accordingly, in such a case, the explanation by mail was abandoned, other methods as by FAX, etc. had to be utilized.
Hence, there have been proposed a variety of methods and devices for adding the information to the electronic mail as below.
Patent document 1 proposes a system for selecting a necessary attachment text by executing a process such as a search, etc. for a database on the basis of information mainly about a sender and an appliance used as a terminal thereof or about a recipient and an appliance used as a terminal thereof.
Patent document 2 proposes an electronic mail device for transmitting, based on a transmitting date/time, a transmission area and a receipt area, a mail attached with pieces of information associated therewith.
Patent documents 3 and 4 propose a system and a method, wherein a sender describes tag-formatted setting information or the like, and an animation and a sentence corresponding to the setting information.
Patent document 5 proposes a system for extracting a location explicitly described in a mail text and attaching information (especially map information) about this location.
Patent documents 6 and 7 propose systems for accumulating pieces of information on parties to and from which mails were sent and received in the past, and attaching an adequate text suited to the accumulated information.
Patent document 8 proposes a system for judging whether a mail including an attachment text to be transmitted is pursuant to a predetermined format or not.
Patent document 9 proposes a system for retaining adequate mail format information adapted to a destination address and, when transmitting a mail, transmitting the mail on the basis of this piece of format information.
Non-Patent document 1 describes a service named “Mail with Premium” for attaching specified moving images, etc. to the mail on a cellular phone. This service is that the moving images, etc. serving as a premium is previously selected from a menu, and thereafter creating and sending a mail text to a destination party.
[Patent Document 1]    Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No.10-107833
[Patent Document 2]    Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No.2001-5755
[Patent Document 3]    Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No.2000-163337
[Patent Document 4]    Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No.2000-322341
[Patent Document 5]    Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No.11-53278
[Patent Document 6]    Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No.11-296450
[Patent Document 7]    Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No.11-136278
[Patent Document 8]    Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No.2000-250828
[Patent Document 9]    Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No.7-283834
[Non-Patent document 1]
Implementation of “Mail with Premium-Added Mail Campaign”, example of “Premium-Added Mail”, KDDI Corp., Okinawa Cellular Phone Inc., [Searched on Feb. 20th in 2003], Internet URL:http://www.kddi.com/release/2002/0605/index2.html